A spiritual journey

Argentinian-born French director Gaspar Noé – I Stand Alone (1998), Irreversible (2002) – challenges the impossible once again with Enter the Void (2009).

The action moves slowly, but hypnotically. Oscar (Nathaniel Brown) lives with his sister, Linda (Paz de la Huerta), in the shiny, noisy and mysterious Tokyo. He’s a drug-addict and dealer and she’s a stripper – after their parents’ death, they grew up apart and now they are trying to take care of each other, but not knowing how and when to show their feelings. And, when Oscar is shot dead in a drug deal gone wrong, all seems lost – but he promised always to take care of his sister, even after death.

Get ready to enter the void. Oscar’s void. Events now unfold from the perspective of Oscar’s spirit – when he was alive, his eyes were the camera and we saw him only when he looked in a mirror. Once dead, the viewpoint shifts, and we are now inside Oscar’s spirit, witnessing memories from his childhood, with glimpses of the past, present and flights over city streets and through walls. His spirit, you see, is undergoing a death-transformation-reincarnation ritual, just like in the Tibetan Book of the Dead that his friend Alex (Cyril Roy) told him about.

As a viewer, you travel with his spirit into the void, on a journey that you will have never experienced before. The movie is visually astonishing – it’s not death that is the most shocking thing here, but rather the way in which we are actually able to feel Oscar, as viewers.

Amazing sound and light effects (fractals and spirals), angry sex, pain, violence, death and rebirth (and a section on psychoactive drugs add to the movie’s visual narration and originality. Highly provocative, bold and utterly insane – watch out Tarantino and Lars von Trier!

162 mins. In English and Japanese.

For another take on enter the void, check out the review over at http://www.dogandwolf.com